a daily blog on well-being and how to feel better by Mark Barger Elliott…

What makes your computer run is called an OS, or operating system. My iPhone, for example, now runs iOS 16.6. Outside of computers, it’s helpful to consider what operating system we are using to run our lives. Here are a few examples: An operating system can be a book like the Bible, the Torah, or the…

We are big fans of the artist Sarah Sze who has an exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. You’ll find a photograph we took of one of her pieces at on-emotions.com. She gave a talk about the show we were able to attend where she made a fascinating comment. Sze shared how…

The great biologist, Darcy Thompson, speaking about how things develop in nature said, “everything is the way it is because it got that way.” Sometimes we wonder how we got somewhere physically, spiritually, vocationally, or emotionally.   The answer is Thompson’s observation – developmentally, it’s that way “because it got that way.”  If we find ourselves…

One of the 20th century’s most influential philosophers of science, Karl Popper, observed that knowledge arises as we grapple with problems. But more often than not, don’t we fear problems? We avoid them. Delegate them. Get stressed about them. Problems, however, if we think about it, usually teach us something. Even if it’s something we…

A 6 foot tall, dark-haired woman with a  Romanian accent approached me and said, “Happy Birthday, Lynn. I hope the year ahead will be full of good surprises!” Good surprises? How strange those two words sounded together.  When was it, I wondered, that “good surprises” had come to sound like an oxymoron; at what point had…

What do Mark Twain, Jesus, the Dalai Lama and a friend of ours have in common? They all said something profound about how to approach our instinct to worry. After discussing a complicated project our friend said, “well, let’s wait to worry.”  We thought that was brilliant – wait to worry. In other words, let’s put…